


just beyond the limits of the mind

by StormLeviosa



Series: In places deep, where dark things sleep [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Angst, Childhood Trauma, Fairy Tale Curses, Fairy Tale Style, Friendship, Gen, How Do I Tag, Mute Cassandra Cain, Not Canon Compliant, Not Really Character Death, can't really call it the dragon au now, unfortunately dragon dad bruce does not appear in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:02:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29010984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormLeviosa/pseuds/StormLeviosa
Summary: She fought and she hated it. She killed and she hated it. She frightened and she hated it.And all the while the future flashed before her eyes. It kept her sane and kept her mad.The future told her one day she would be free.Cassandra has a gift, and a curse. So long as she can use them both to protect others, to help people, she finds she doesn't really mind.
Series: In places deep, where dark things sleep [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2032825
Kudos: 14
Collections: Greatest Batfam Fics to Ever Exist





	just beyond the limits of the mind

**Author's Note:**

> So Cass finally gets her standalone. I've honestly been tapping away at this since chapter 1 of 'winds of change', which is a depressingly long time, but it's done now. Might do another chapter though, once the rest of the stories in-'verse have caught up. You can fit so much story in this AU!

In a land far away, a girl was born gifted.

The girl’s parents had tried for a long time to create such a gifted human life, and they named her Cassandra - to excel - and celebrated their achievement. 

Cassandra’s training started early, and started well. She was gifted by birth, and talented by training. She was a special child: smart and quick and strong. And above all she had her gift. Cassandra had eyes like pools of black ink, like the night sky full of stars. Cassandra had eyes that could see everything, could read the future in the scurrying of a mouse on the kitchen floor, or the head tilt of her father as he taught her to fight. Could read the past in the crack of a tea cup, or the blink of a cow’s soft eyes. Cassandra knew what was to come, and what had already been. Always.

When Cassandra was still small, when her gift was still growing every day. When Cassandra was young enough to lack control, when she did not know when to not tell someone to avoid the forest path unless they wished to die a painful, crushing death. When Cassandra was still a tool for her parent’s machinations, her mother and father fought. Bitterly. And Cassandra became cursed.

No one was quite clear how it happened. Perhaps she had simply been told to be quiet too many times. Perhaps some god was angered by her flagrant displays of power. Perhaps the spirits wished to take her for their own. It did not matter how it happened, to Cassandra’s parents at least. Cassandra was cursed. She was defective. She was useless.

Cassandra’s uselessness did not deter her father for long. Her curse had the potential to be her greatest strength, even greater than her gift, and he knew how to use that. When her mother left for better things, he taught her to hone her gift, to use it for her own gain, to use it to best others in battle, and soon she could defeat all but the strongest monsters.

Her father used her to defeat his enemies instead.

He did not teach her to read. What use was literacy to his blood soaked creation? He did not teach her to write. What use was a voice to his silent hunter? And so Cassandra remained his. Trapped. Silent. Straining.

She fought and she hated it. She killed and she hated it. She frightened and she hated it.

And all the while the future flashed before her eyes. It kept her sane and kept her mad.

The future told her one day she would be free.

Sometimes when Cassandra was left alone (those rare and lonely and lovely times), she sunk to her knees, gave in to her base impulses, and screamed and shrieked and raved and sobbed and cried out to the sky gods to beg for their aid. And then she laughed her strange, choked, hysterical laugh - eyes scrunched to slits and cheeks split in two - because it was useless, hopeless, pointless, when no sound could pass her lips. No matter how much she strained her throat, she was utterly, totally, silent. When she was very small, before her words were stolen from her, Cassandra had heard stories of her namesake at her father’s knee. A princess of long ago. A prophetess, just like her. This girl told nothing but true prophecy, but was cursed to never be believed. Cassandra thought that might be preferable to never being heard at all.

When she was somewhere between child and adult, Cassandra escaped. Others might say she ran away, and certainly she ran, certainly it was away, but there are implications to words that Cassandra knew very well, now she could not use them. She ran. Yes. Away. Yes. But she did not run away. Cassandra was no coward, no rebellious child. She did not run away. She escaped. It was terrifying and it was intoxicating and it was wonderful.

Somewhere along the way, she found freedom.

Somewhere along the way, she died.

Cassandra sought out words like a starving man seeks food. She could not say them, but by the time she had travelled beyond the borders of her homeland, she could read them. By the time she entered the land of the dragons, she could write them too. In every city she came to, she searched for explanations, for ways to lift her curse, for ways to speak again. She did not know why this was so important to her, but it was. And everywhere she went said something different, but always something magical.

Cassandra sought out spirits like a drowning man seeks air. She looked for the one who had cursed her, or one who could help her, and found neither. Spirits are hard to fight and harder to bargain with.

This is, perhaps, how Cassandra died.

When Cassandra woke up, she did not - as she had hoped - have a voice. When Cassandra woke up, she had a headache.

She was lying in a ring of standing stones, limbs splayed straight out from her torso at precise angles, head facing the rising sun. She was alone. Something about this troubled her, though precisely what it was escaped her. She turned her head to the side, took in the thick pine forest, the silence, the red dirt. She looked up at the clear blue sky, at the birds circling, at the weak sun behind her.

She wiggled her toes, her fingers, dug them into the soil. They passed through easily and she could not feel the grit of it under her nails. With a start, she realised she could not feel the ground beneath her at all. Cassandra was floating. It was not a lot, just a bare inch or so from the ground, but it was enough that her white smock (and when had it been white? She could not remember, but she was sure that it had not been so pale before) hung awkwardly. She curled her knees to her chest, watched grass flutter beneath her toes that did not touch it, and felt invisible.

Cassandra was used to being unheard. She was not so used to being unseen.

She was very used to being untouchable.

There were three things that Cassandra knew about herself at this moment, besides her name: she was gifted; she was cursed; and she was dead. All but one of these were things she had to fix. All but one of these were things she would reverse. One day.

  
  


It was easier to travel, Cassandra found, when one was not alive. No money is needed, or food, or water, and the miles pass by faster when one’s feet do not touch the ground. She no longer walked, or hitched rides with fellow travellers; she flew. And her gift still worked better than ever, so she knew where to go, and where was useless. When she reached a crossroads, she could see which road to take. Always, she kept moving, kept watching, kept hunting, and always she strived towards somewhere she could lift her curse. 

Somewhere along the way, she discovered that - with effort - she could make herself solid, visible, real. She used it to read in libraries, to dance in the street, to fight off the monsters that stalked the night. Sometimes she even forgot that she was a monster, too.

She met a boy in a city full of spires and cobbled streets who taught her to speak with her hands. It was a nice city, one more full of learning than monsters, and this boy looked straight at her when she was invisible and said hello. He looked _at her_ . Not through her. Not behind her. _At her._ She was too shocked to wave hello back, too shocked to make herself visible. She blinked, once. And the boy blinked, once. He asked her name. Cassandra smiled.

The boy had spent all his life fighting monsters of a different kind to hers. And now he was here to learn, to leave the monsters in the past. He told her of the great dragon in the mountains, of the poor towns there that needed help to overcome their more insidious monsters, the ones that don’t die when you stab them, just wriggle off the knife. And over books upon books of fae curses and demon lore because that was how she determined she would lift her curse, he taught her the beginnings of a new language - one that even the silent could speak. When she left the city, left him, she signed her own goodbye, and he signed one too. 

  
  


It was by accident that she met Stephanie Brown.

She had travelled far, and learnt lots, and still she was cursed, still she was dead, still she had further to go. But in the town at the bottom of the mountain, there were plenty of monsters to fight, and very few people to do the fighting. Even fewer who were not monsters themselves. This was how she met Stephanie Brown.

Stephanie Brown dressed all in purple when she hunted monsters. It was a nice change from all the black, Cassandra thought. Stephanie Brown fought with a knife and her wits and nothing else. Her voice echoed on stone and it was bright and full of laughter. Stephanie Brown put her whole heart into her job. It was strange, Cassandra thought, to see someone so _good._ Because Cassandra had met good people, people who helped, people who healed, people who gave and gave and gave, but never good people who killed. And Stephanie Brown killed. Stephanie Brown killed monsters who would kill others and she was _good at it_. But Stephanie Brown was also a good person. She helped the little girl who fell on the path; she gave bread to the starving boy on the corner; she carried an elderly woman’s shopping as she walked home; she gave everything she did not need to others who did. Stephanie Brown was more than a slayer, though she had never intended to be. Stephanie Brown was a hero.

Cassandra watched Stephanie from a distance for over a week before being noticed. In any normal situation, this would be a terrible lapse in awareness, something that would get someone killed, but this was not a normal situation, and Cassandra was not a normal girl. Cassandra was but a ghost of a girl, slippery and silent; she was not easily seen. Still, when Stephanie found herself alone but for Cassandra, in a nest of terrible howling vukodlak, Cassandra became visible, became solid, and she helped. It was all she knew how to do.

Cassandra did not remember learning to fight, exactly. She remembered snatches, in between the flashes of foretelling, that showed her a man she thought must be her father, showed her blood and horror, showed her breaking, and standing up, and breaking again and again until she didn’t. She was glad she did not remember, if that was her life before. And yet it was this life before that allowed her to fight so well, to protect so many, to kill so many more. It was this life before that saved Stephanie. 

Her gift could see from all angles and so Cassandra was never still. She fought like a whirlwind and barely looked before she struck, because she had already seen. Cassandra could fight utterly blind, because she did not need her eyes to see. She only needed her gift. Back to back with Stephanie, she fought monstrously, with hands like claws, and a grin full of teeth. She fought until the monsters were dead. It was too late, by then, to slip away into insignificance. She was seen, and known, and Stephanie, with her goodness and her brightness, had asked Cassandra’s name. Except Cassandra could not speak, such was her curse, so Cassandra could not say it. Still, though, Cassandra smiled, because Stephanie was alive and that was what mattered. She smiled, and she waved, and she mouthed hello, because her mouth still remembered the shapes even if her tongue could not make the sounds. Stephanie somehow, wondrously, understood.

“You can’t speak?” she asked, and Cassandra nodded. Stephanie shrugged one shoulder and grinned. Her face had a spot of black blood on it, but she did not move to wipe it away, nor did she push her hair away. “That’s cool. We can be friends anyway. Thanks for the help, by the way. You’re super good at fighting those things. We should team up.” She spoke as fast as Cassandra did not, full of fire and energy. They could make this work, Cassandra knew, one of them silent and one of them loud, one of them dead and one of them burning up with life.

It was fate, perhaps, that she met Stephanie Brown.

**Author's Note:**

> It is almost midnight. I have a morning seminar and work tomorrow. I do not care. This is getting posted tonight because I feel like it.  
> Wikipedia says vukodlak are 'vampire werewolves' because folklore is just that extra sometimes  
> I hope you like it!! Coming up with ideas for this AU is the most imaginative I've felt in months and like, I wrote a quarter of a novel for a uni assignment. Anyway, reading your comments is the highlight of my day, so let me know what you think!


End file.
